Transport of Biomass Burning Aerosol into the Extratropical Tropopause Region over Europe via Warm Conveyor Belt Uplift

Abstract

Abstract. We present measurements from the aircraft-based TPEx (Tropopause composition gradients and mixing Experiment) mission in June 2024 over Europe. The measurement platform, a Learjet 35A, was equipped with in-situ trace gas and aerosol measurements and filter samplers for offline analysis. For vertical gradient measurements of trace species and aerosol, we conducted redundant measurements on a fully automated towed sensor shuttle (TOSS) 200 m below the aircraft. On 17 June 2024, we observed a filament with elevated aerosol number concentrations of up to 800 particles cm−3 between 100 nm and 1 µm. This is higher by a factor of two to four than the local background. Carbon monoxide (CO) mixing ratios were larger than 100 ppbv. Single particle analysis of impactor samples using electron microscopy show characteristic biomass burning (BB) aerosol in the tropopause region. The TOSS measurements also allow the calculation of the potential temperature gradient (Δθ⋅Δz-1). Within the polluted filament, we observe changes towards smaller gradients, which is presumably due to an increase of potential temperature at lower altitudes by radiative heating as a consequence of the transported BB aerosol. Trajectory analysis show air mass origin over Canada with low-level long-range transport and subsequent uplift by a warm conveyor belt (WCB) over Europe as additional pathway of pollution into the UTLS. Furthermore, this analysis yields that BB aerosol can be transported in a WCB into the UTLS there it can be mixed with stratospheric air masses.